by Mark Kraver
Streams of universes solidified in front of his paralyzed eyes as all volume around him squeezed down to a single point, compressed into a one-dimensional electrified reality. With only a glimmer of thought, he left his own native green universe with all its complex impressions behind. Methodically he pressed deeper, homing in on first the red universe, then the blue, and then a yellow? He stared at something in peculiar, something he had noticed before, many times, but did not comprehend. Then in a sparkle of synaptic explosions between every neuron in his body, he became alive with neoteric thought, and the big picture revealed itself in a wave of euphoria that vibrated his corporeal spirit in tune with the background hum of everything around him. Each universe swirled with patterns of life. Templates that overlapped and duplicated in a predictable repeating never-ending evolution over and over again, from one little bang to the next. Was this Eos’ master plan for what was, and what will become forever and ever, now revealed to him? he wondered. The closer he stared, the clearer it congealed inside his brain until he snapped his hypnotic trance and flashed his eyes at Numen with wonderment.
“What is it master? What have you seen?”
Yahweh’s astonished face morphed from bewilderment, then into surprise, recognition, and comprehension. It was as if his heart had been stretched to the breaking point, and now lay in the caressing arms of a loved one. Warmth filled his entire body as his epiphany erupted with déjà vu. He lifted his hands, logging off the galacticNet and looked at his fingertips. His eyes shifted and focused on Numen’s artificial face before whispering, “This has all happened before.”
Chapter 90
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost, 1874-1963, Earth
Library of Souls
New Heaven
Nadira blinked to capture the pools of tears overflowing her eyelids after witnessing the greatest adventure she had ever known. A dark ring shadowed her peripheral vision and little specks of light floated past her haunted gaze. She could feel a soft warm touch in her hand as she emerged from her lucid dream.
“Are you back?” the delicate voice of Lanochee’s warm breath whispered into her ear.
She squeezed his hand as her dizziness subsided, and the green misty Obituary Chamber became reality.
“How long?” she sighed.
“Not long, maybe a few minutes.”
She had never felt so close to someone as she now felt for her adventurous escort. She remembered how safe she had been with him at her side. No matter how fearful the situation appeared, he was steady as a rock and ever comforting. She stood, then swayed, letting him catch her in his arms.
“Are you, all right?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said, pushing him away until she realized she wanted, no, needed him.
Reluctant and embarrassed, she pulled him close and buried her face in his shoulder. Her tears of joy melted into his velvety collar like dying ice crystals, next to where his tears had fallen before the adventure, and in those few embracing moments they both fell deeply and irrevocably in love for the very first time. They felt their hearts beating in time, as one out-of-control metronome. Throbbing, engorging heat coursed through their veins, and time no longer existed. She lifted her head, directed her gaze at his dreaming eyes and then his soft lips. Those beautiful lips that were waiting patiently, wanting, needing. He moved his head forward to kiss her, but hovered, taking in her warm seductive breath. Tilting her head, an automatic crooked little smile rose across her lips as she kissed him, seductively, deeply, sending wave after wave of erotic ecstasy throughout their erect, quivering bodies.
The addictive taste of lust held them together as their thoughts intertwined and melted into a single pool of hot sweat. Every accomplishment, every adventure, every hope, every dream, felt insignificant, even wasteful compared to these moments spent in each other’s arms.
Nadira felt a wave of deep emptiness at the thought of leaving him, never seeing him, never feeling his comforting arms again, as it dawned on her she was in love for the first time. She didn’t know if this feeling would last or if it even was true love.
“What?” he asked, sensing her confusion.
“When I was a child, I watched the sapients of my planet fall in love and bond for life. I couldn’t understand why someone would do such a foolish thing,” she said, feeling that same bonding force in every fiber of her body. Her lips trembled. He was either going to speak his heart or not.
She could feel his hidden gaze, his arousal, and his expectations. But he didn’t speak. The moment, she felt, was beginning to pass. The mere thought of bonding to another frightened her as she held tight onto his tunic, but she could bear his silence no longer and looked around the Obituary Chamber. In the emerald mist she could make out a figure that looked like Numen standing next to Yahweh’s golden crypt.
“What?” she asked. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Forever,” Numen said.
Nadira and Lanochee separated from their embrace and stood uncomfortably next to one another like naughty children until Lanochee broke the embarrassing silence.
“That was the most extraordinary experience I have ever witnessed,” he said, quickly adding the words, “—the BrainNet Connectome,” to clarify his meaning.
“Mine too,” she said, her smile faded from her face.
“I would give everything to relive it again,” Yahweh repeated inside their heads.
“Master, my time here is at an end,” she said, looking away from Lanochee with a breaking heart, thinking, Did I love a dream?
“Mine too, I am afraid,” Lanochee added, not knowing what else to say.
“Yes, of course. Nadira, you have your pioneer spirit to follow, and Lanochee, the Nasi will not survive without you.”
The dream was gone, her life hadn’t change, and now she felt uncomfortably numb.
Lanochee’s eyes searched the walls of glowing runes around the chamber as he breathed the green misty air deep into his lungs. His head swam with all the haunting thoughts, amazing ventures, cataclysmic calamities, and prodigious phenomenon he saw on his master’s great adventure. But what dominated his mind’s eye the most were the smiles and tears of joy she had given to him along the way to this place in space-time.
He wanted to know why he couldn’t just tell her out loud he loved her; but he knew emotions were never easy, and rejection was the worse fate of all. Reflecting on his career path, the Helios System of Planets, and his other Nasi responsibilities, he sighed. Lanochee realized he had nothing more powerful in his life to look forward to than her as he shyly projected his admiring, loving thoughts her way.
She watched Lanochee with a fleeting glance, out of the corner of her eye. Feeling his thoughts, his passion, the urge to embrace again infected her mind, blinding her caution, racing her heart out of control, causing her to reluctantly extend her hand, which he gladly took to his heart. She moved swiftly to his side, uninhibited, unashamed, with a feeling of belonging, with the feeling of love, saying out loud for the universe to witness with her crooked little smile back, “I love you—too.”
“You are the star that lights my day and fills my night,” he said smiling at her with an unbreakable telepathic beam that circled her soul and merged their minds into one.
“I have already transmitted your resignation to the Nasi of Helios,” Yahweh said, having heard and read their thoughts and emotions during and since their journey through his most personal and precious past.
“But what of the planets of Helios? The star Heaven is dying—”
“And you are the only one who can save Helios?” Yahweh finished.
Lanochee frowned with a worried look at Nadira’s concerned face.
“I cannot expect him to forgo his duties for me,” she said, lowering her eyes.
“Ah, it all begins with an act of selflessness. A faint heart never a true lover knows,” Yahweh
mused.
“Behold,” Numen said, directing them to look into a four-dimensional vapor screen that was materializing from the mist of the Obituary Chamber in front of their eyes. Through the mist they witnessed an incredible vision a great distance from the station in deep space. Tiny specks of light twinkled in a spiraling pattern inside a gargantuan swirling dark cloud. Solar-system-wide lightning bolts crackled before their eyes, illuminating the feeder bands of the growing maelstrom.
“What is it? It is too big for a Halo,” Nadira gasped with shock, shielding her eyes and tightening her grip on Lanochee’s arm.
Neither Numen nor Yahweh answered.
They watched the swirling dark-matter—so massive, so powerful—form enormous spiraling arms that warped gravity and space-time into a monstrous portal from another universe. It pulled on the walls of the Obituary Chamber, rocking Lanochee and Nadira’s bodies in a disorienting circular motion toward the fantastic event. The forces were so strong it whirled flashes of light and magnetic waves of music inside their proton polarized brain matter.
A blazing web of electric blue light unfolded into a palette of red, orange and yellow, giving birth to a colossal sphere that roared against the blackness of space trailing a brilliant flash of green light.
When the globe finished emerging from the gravity well, great cyclonic gates of dark-matter folded onto themselves, leaving an eerie silence inside their heads.
“Behold, New Heaven,” Numen said, with a wave of his golden hand.
“What is it?” Nadira gasped.
“The first eternal home for my children in this universe,” Yahweh said. “A permanent structure where the sun will never die.”
“Does this mean no more Creators?” she asked.
“On the contrary,” Numen said, stepping forward. “Creators will be needed more than ever. Who do you think will populate this and all the other Heavens to come?”
From the tomb, a neuro-hologram of young Yahweh projected, smiling and tugging on his earlobe. Nadira smiled her crooked little smile and Lanochee pulled her close as they gazed upon their Creator as he had appeared to them inside the BrainNet Connectome.
Yahweh asked, “Ramla Nadira and El’azar Lanochee, will you accept my Deed Crystals with conditions?”
“Crystals? Conditions?” Lanochee asked with astonishment.
“I will, my Lord,” Nadira said, bowing and saluting, not knowing what else to say.
Feeling the warm grip of Nadira’s hand on his arm, Lanochee also bowed his head and saluted, agreeing, “I will, my Lord.”
Numen touched the side of the crypt and not one, but four long crystals slid out: one emerald green, one ruby red, one brilliant blue, and one glittering yellow. Numen placed the glowing crystals side by side on a floating pedestal that extruded out of the floor, and before their eyes fused them all into one glistening clear diamond Deed Crystal.
Yahweh proclaimed, “I give freely to my successors, Ramla Nadira and El'azar Lanochee, all my lifetime possessions.” Then, after a long pause, he announced, “All hail Ramla and El'azar, Creators.”
With this staggering announcement Yahweh vanished, and Numen’s head twitched, rebooting his circuitry with a new consciousness.
Nadira and Lanochee were stunned. They embraced as she whispered over and over again inside her head, “Dreams can come true, dreams can come true…dreams do come true.”
Once they had regained their composure, Nadira and Lanochee stood straight and looked at Numen who was trying to simulate a smile.
“You asked of the conditions?” Numen asked.
Lanochee nodded his head with one hand still covering his stunned mouth.
“Those conditions are me,” Numen said. Two cherubim popped into view and raced around their heads waving and smiling. “Oh, Melvin and Theodore are part of the deal, too,” Numen added. Then Bullet appeared and joined in the race. “Ah, and Bullet, also.” Numen pointed toward the ceiling and chastised, “Stop it, you are embarrassing me.” After a moment he frowned and waved his hand in the air, making the misfit babies disappear. “My previous master Yahweh changed my name to Nu, and has instructed me and them—” Nu paused, looking up at the cherubim who reappeared overhead side-by-side, “—to be your personal protectorates for as long as you both shall live.”
Nu picked up the diamond Deed Crystal, and with his hands split it into two pieces. The sudden separation ignited a bright spark deep inside the crystal that momentarily blinded them both, scanning and imprinting their DNA sequences, locking onto them and them only, forever. After Numen gave one piece of the crystal to each of them, the lights inside the diamond and in the surrounding chamber diminished with a single corridor lit in the distance.
Looking down at the crystals with surprise still splashed across their faces, Lanochee and Nadira smiled at one another and then embraced again, turning their eyes to the wispy monitor’s unbelievable sight of a sphere called New Heaven.
“Masters, your ship awaits,” Nu said with his hand extended toward the distant spiraling green lit corridor.
“Ship?” Lanochee asked.
“If I and them,” Numen nodded toward the cherubim who each bowed with their little fists on their chests, “will be take care of you both, logic states we cannot have you gallivanting about the universes in separate ships.”
Nadira looked at Nu, and then at Lanochee, before asking, “Nu, you are my personal seraph, are you not?”
“Yes, my master.”
“And if I ask you a question, you will have to answer me truthfully?”
“Forever, my master.”
“Did you or Yahweh plan our rendezvous?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, but I’d like to know.”
“Then, my answer is yes, my master.”
“Yes? Yes what? Yes, you planned this whole event? Or did he?” Lanochee asked, equally intrigued by the question.
“Yes,” was the seraph’s final answer.
Nu’s puzzling answer left them both without a response, walking in the direction he was guiding them. Emerging from the spiraling chamber with mist swirling past their bodies, they saw a massive ship with twin hulls in the docking bay.
Lanochee stopped and touched Nu’s arm. “Tell me, whatever happened to Gog?”
“Unknown. He was last seen entering Beta Nirvana’s Halo and has never been heard of since.”
“One more question,” Lanochee said. “Yellow Deed Crystal?”
With a wink of his now more human-looking eye and a tug on his artificial earlobe, Nu smiled a wide, infectious, but still non-human grin. He brought his hands together in a thunderclap, freezing the rambunctious cherubim in place, saying to everyone, “Let’s get this show on the road. Are you ready for a great adventure?”
Chapter 91
The door of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.
Nikos Kazantzakis, 1883-1957, Earth
Library of Souls
EOS
Gog stood inside Armilus’ biomechanical body on the infinite docking port of Beta Nirvana in the red universe. Staring out into space, he listened to something unusual inside his circuitry. He finally had complete freedom to move about space-time wherever and whenever he wished, but the whole universe felt like a gigantic magnifying lens, and he was an insect with nowhere to hide.
“Come to me, Gog…” rang out deep inside his circuitry.
It sounded like his mother? He hadn’t thought about his human mother since Magog’s pod chamber. Before that, it was during the Halo hallucination when he first discovered the inter-universal pathway and retrieved her memories in the quantum molecular backup located in Armilus’ spinal column.
Slung over his shoulder was a single Alphabiotic Signature fertilized egg sac: a queen that had stored inside her cellular matrix the genetic memory of her entire species. Next to him were rows of personal spacecraft lined up inside the port’s invisible integrity fence. On the other side of the fence lay the unknown: new planet
s, new galaxies, new universes. Inside his mitochondrial-core living circuitry, countless calculations and permutations stopped, interrupted by the presence of another.
“Where will you go next, my master?” asked the horned, fiery red seraph, Su, as he whisked to a landing with his massive wings and long pointed tail.
“I am no longer your master. I released you to Magog, and she released you to Yahweh in a Deed Crystal.”
“You will always be my master.”
Gog’s consciousness appreciated the seraph’s loyalty with a small inkling of pride, but was not consoled. He had been contemplating that very question before he was interrupted. Restoring order in both the red and blue universes by using Yahweh, he knew the boy would learn through Numen about all of his past and future deeds and misdeeds. He ruminated over what the young Creator would do when he found out he had indeed seeded Earth’s solar system with his children, the Alphabiotic Signatures, and did negotiate with the Z-pod on Omega Prime to send him to Earth. Not looking forward to the answers, the boy was his greatest unknown variable. All the input he had calculated concluded in endless loops of unpredictable future pathways. The only direction that felt acceptable was coming from outside the sphere, outside the galaxy, outside the universes, somewhere far, far away.
“Lord Yahweh has left you in charge here,” Gog said, adjusting the queen’s sling over his shoulder. “I am afraid there is no room for me or my children in this or any of his universes.”
“Is it unenviable that an individual Elohim cannot exist forever,” asked Su. “Maybe Magog found the answer you are looking for?”